Y2KNEWSWIREhas
confirmed with the California State Attorney General office: certain
firearms are now under a confiscation order. This, also posted on a
state-run web site. California residents must turn in their SKS rifles
by 1/1/2000 -- precisely the Y2K rollover date -- or face criminal
prosecution. Recently-enacted legislation mandates this confiscation,
calling it a "buyback" program and offering to reimburse gun
owners $230 per "relinquished" rifle.

Amid cries from gun owners that their
Second Amendment rights are being further trampled just in time for
Y2K, Y2KNEWSWIRE hit the phones to find out exactly what's going on
here.

We spoke with Nathan Barankin,
Director of Communications for the California Attorney General office,
who informed us that this recent SKS gun ban issue arises from an
unresolved legal definition. California was one of the first states to
pass a ban on so-called "assault weapons," which included
the SKS rifle -- but only if the rifle had a detachable magazine.
Rifles with fixed, non-removable magazines were exempt from this
confiscation order, but those with removable magazine had to be
recorded ("registered") and turned over to government
authorities.

Many owners of fixed-magazine SKS
rifles later converted them to removable-magazine models. At the time,
the Attorney General (who is not the current AG) wrote a letter to
these gun owners assuring them that these rifles were perfectly legal
and not subject to the gun confiscation order.

In 1996, a man owning one of these
converted rifles was arrested in Santa Clara County and prosecuted by
the District Attorney for possessing an illegal firearm. The case
wound its way to the state Supreme Court where a decision was finally
handed down: yes, indeed, these rifles are illegal, the court said.

This ruling created instant
criminals. Barankin told Y2KNEWSWIRE, "So what we had in 1997
was, by judicial ruling, a law that says all these people who had been
informed that these weapons were legal were now suddenly felons."

Yes: a state court decision
transformed law-abiding citizens into felons. Recognizing the obvious
problem here, the state legislature passed a bill that would allow
owners of these newly-illegal SKS rifles a "window of
opportunity" to turn them in without being prosecuted as felons.
Barankin says, "This was not something that the legislature took
a great deal of pleasure in doing." In fact, the author of this
bill was a former chapter president of the NRA in Los Angeles.

Currently, the Attorney General is
trying to get the word out to people so that local police aren't
forced to arrest these newly-defined "felons" who would
likely end up doing time in prison for owning a gun that the state
previously assured them was perfectly legal!

THAT'S THE LEGAL DESCRIPTION But the
story may be much larger than this. Barankin told Y2KNEWSWIRE about
the trees, not the forest. We threw out a wildcard and asked Barankin
his thoughts on the parallels between California's gun confiscation
program and Adolf Hitler's gun registration (and subsequent
confiscation) that ultimately helped the regime kill millions of
ethnic Jews with minimum resistance.

He didn't waver. He answered,
"Let me put it this way, Bill Lockyer [the Attorney General]
himself is a supporter of the 2nd Amendment. What the state is
attempting to do is enact reasonable gun control laws that are
necessary to protect the public. One of those laws covers the assault
weapons."

We asked whether the current
confiscation order would soon be expanded to other firearms. Barankin
told us, "No." He explained further, "This is a very
narrow situation, necessitated by the poor interpretation of an
existing law and a court ruling. The state of California is not
interested in getting in the business of confiscating anyone's
weapons."

Y2KNEWSWIRE then asked about the
confiscation deadline: 1/1/2000. Just in time for Y2K. Barankin
answered, "It is a coincidence. This was a law that was enacted
in late Fall, last year, and generally laws that are passed in
California become effective the next January 1, so they just wanted to
give people a year to comply with the law."

According to Barankin, then, this gun
confiscation order has nothing to do with Y2K and everything to do
with correcting a legal snafu. Barankin, by the way, was very
straightforward and more than happy to answer even our most aggressive
questions.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE CONFISCATION
ORDER AND POTENTIAL Y2K RAMIFICATIONS Interestingly, the web site
describing the gun confiscation program does contain phrases
reminiscent of authoritarian control: "Procedures to turn in your
[rifle]" and "...persons in California possessing an SKS
semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine may be subject to
prosecution, and the weapon subject to seizure..." Further
instructions tell rifle owners, "To relinquish your [rifle] to
your local law enforcement agency, you must strictly adhere to the
following guidelines..."

The only people allowed to own these
rifles are those with the right "papers," authorized by
state officials. All this sounds a little too familiar, and it has
probably only worsened the fear of those individuals theorizing that
Y2K will result in the invocation of various Executive Orders that
activate the widespread confiscation of firearms. The State of
California, it seems, did not go out its way to make sure its gun
confiscation instructions did not add to this fear.

CRIMINALS PROBABLY WON'T COMPLY
Y2KNEWSWIRE has learned that at least one person in the state Dept. of
Justice does not think this will remove these guns from the hands of
criminals. We spoke with a senior level employee in the California
Dept. of Justice who told us, under condition that we do not attribute
the quote to him, "I haven't heard anybody say anything other
than only the law-abiding people will turn them in."

As this Dept. of Justice employee
points out, efforts to confiscate guns from criminals often has the
opposite effect: criminals ignore the law while law-abiding gun owners
comply. This further empowers criminals by changing the ratio of gun
possession. After the confiscation is complete, criminals know that
fewer private citizens have firearms with which to defend themselves.

THE Y2K EFFECT In the context of Y2K,
this current California gun confiscation order simply means that the
ratio of armed criminals to unarmed citizens will be higher still. The
(voting) majority of Californians have defined this as
"safety," and this new level of "safety" will be
achieved precisely on January 1, 2000. Oblivious to historical
parallels, California says it is simply trying to clean up a surprise
legal ruling that instantly redefined thousands of law-abiding
citizens as "criminals."

The story here isn't directly about
guns, really; it's about a state bureaucracy that allows itself to
become mired in details while avoiding the Year 2000 question: will
these laws make the people safer when Y2K arrives? Or, put another
way, will increasing the ratio of armed criminals to unarmed citizens
result in fewer crimes being committed during any potential Y2K
disruption?

When we posed this very question to
another mid-level employee at the Attorney General office, he
disavowed having anything to do with those "top-level"
decisions, saying, "We have a leader in this department that
tells us what to do."

Stricken with disbelief at the
invocation of that phrase -- "just following orders" -- we
ended the interview.

In the end, we were left with a
splintered picture of what's going on with gun control and Y2K in
California. There is no conspiracy in this isolated case. Well-meaning
individuals are attempting to prevent everyday citizens from being
arrested as felons by giving them time to turn in these firearms
suddenly deemed "illegal." But the people in charge seem
unconcerned about the end result of their actions. They're enforcing a
state Supreme Court decision, oblivious to either the historical
parallels or the Y2K ramifications of their actions. They did not seem
deceptive, "evil" or malicious. They did, however, seem
ignorant of the geopolitical history of gun control and how increasing
the ratio of armed criminals to unarmed citizens during Y2K might be a
terrible idea.